What Are Little Boys Made Of?

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What Are Little Boys Made Of? is a popular nursery rhyme dating from the early nineteenth century:

What are little boys made of?
Snips and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails,[1]
That's what[2] little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice, and everything nice,[3]
That's what little girls are made of.

The rhyme is part of a larger work called "What Folks Are Made Of" or "What All the World Is Made Of". Other stanzas describe what babies, young men, young women, sailors, soldiers, nurses, fathers, mothers, old men, old women, and all folks are made of. Burton Stevenson attributed the two verses above to the English poet Robert Southey (c. 1820).

David Bowie uses a modified line from this in the song Magic Dance from the Labyrinth soundtrack.

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Common variations replace "snips" with "slugs" (especially in the UK), "snakes", or "frogs". In The Real Mother Goose (Rand McNally, 1916), the word is "snaps". It has also be conjectured that the original words were "Snips of snails", meaning little bits of snails. The punctuation and use of the possessive in "puppy-dogs' tails" also varies.
  2. ^ Or "And that's what" or "And such are". These variations are also found in the next stanza.
  3. ^ Or "Sugar and spice, and all things nice."

[edit] See also